Abstract

The Children Act 1989 imposes a duty on Local Authorities in England to ‘safeguard andpromote the welfare of children’ and to ‘promote the upbringing of children by their families’wherever possible. If, during pregnancy, concerns are identified that suggest the child may beat risk of harm a referral may be made to the Local Authority for a pre-birth assessment.When completing a pre-birth assessment social workers and other professionals are ofteninvolved in the process of collecting and analysing information, which will ultimately be used as a basis for planning and decision-making and can have life long consequences for the family. Removing a baby at birth brings with it an inevitable impact on the process of attachment and bonding, as well as the impact of subjecting a family to court proceedings and all of theemotions that entails. However, allowing a baby to be discharged from hospital to a familywho are unable to provide appropriate care and protection or do not have the necessarysupport in place to assist them may result in irreparable harm to, or even the death of thebaby.

Sitting within the context of general child and family social work assessment, pre-birthassessment has received a very limited amount of specific research attention. This thesiscomprises a report on the outcomes of my own research, which was exploratory in nature, anddetails the findings from a mixed methods study of relevant legal and procedural frameworksin England, Local Safeguarding Children Board procedures and a case study of pre-birth socialwork assessment practice in one Local Authority.

The findings were that pre-birth assessment is a complex process guided by a national andlocal procedural framework which does not recognise the unique status of the unborn child.Having evolved from a historical perspective based on protecting live children, the proceduralguidance is contradictory as it does not acknowledge that an unborn child has no legal status and a pregnant woman maintains rights over her own body. The case study also revealed thatsocial workers in the host LA were practising in an environment of managerial systems whichaimed to improve accountability and yet the very systems designed to ensure children did notfall through the ‘safety net’ of professional support were, ironically, prompting systems whichmade practice in (and research into) pre-birth social work assessment a challenge. A narrowforensic approach to pre-birth assessment was found to have developed, with the documentaryprocess of completing pre-birth Initial and Core Assessments (as defined by the Department ofHealth (2003) documentation) becoming split from the process of actually ‘doing’ a social workpre-birth assessment.